{"id":354,"date":"2015-08-30T21:41:23","date_gmt":"2015-08-31T01:41:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/?p=354"},"modified":"2015-08-30T21:41:23","modified_gmt":"2015-08-31T01:41:23","slug":"review-of-american-psalm-world-psalm-by-nicholas-samaras","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/?p=354","title":{"rendered":"Review of American Psalm, World Psalm by Nicholas Samaras"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Samaras<\/a>Nicholas Samaras. American Psalm, World Psalm. <\/em>Ashland Poetry Press, 2014. 233 pgs. $22.95.<\/p>\n

Reviewed by Lynn Domina<\/p>\n

Nicholas Samaras\u2019 second collection, American Psalm, World Psalm <\/em>is a hybrid book, though not \u201chybrid\u201d in the sense that we often hear the word applied to contemporary literature. It\u2019s not the offspring of prose and poetry, of memoir and fiction, or of print and electronic text. It is, instead, a hybrid of psalm and poem. Those two aren\u2019t entirely distinct genres, of course, since psalms are by definition poems, though the reverse is not true. Yet psalms in their canonical sense share particular characteristics even as they can be further classified as psalms of praise, psalms of lament, imprecatory psalms, historical psalms, etc. The most common linguistic feature of Biblical psalms is their use of parallelism, e.g. \u201cI will give thanks to you, O Lord, among the peoples, \/ I will sing praises to you among the nations\u201d (Ps. 108:3). Consistent parallelism as a formal trait is rare in contemporary poetry in English, though canonical psalms also rely on the types of figurative language we also expect in other types of poetry, e.g. \u201cThe Lord is my shepherd\u201d (Ps. 23:1). In these modern psalms, Samaras doesn\u2019t rely on the parallelism so characteristic of their Hebrew kin; nor do these psalms always respond explicitly or directly to those in the Bible. Yet American Psalm, World Psalm <\/em>contains 150 entries, just as the Book of Psalms does, and Samaras\u2019 collection is arranged into five \u201cbooks,\u201d just as the Book of Psalms is. And Samaras\u2019 psalms are prayers as much as poems, with God clearly among his intended audience. A few of the pieces in this collection do succeed more as prayer than poem (odd as it is to suggest that prayers \u201csucceed\u201d or not), but I will focus here on the psalms that are also most effective as poems.<\/p>\n

The poems in this collection vary in form\u2014couplets, quatrains, single long stanzas; rhyme and free verse; litanies and blues. They also vary considerably in length, though the average might be about a page. Yet they are consciously products of their time, containing frequent political and cultural references in the vocabulary of our day\u2014that is, they are \u201cAmerican\u201d psalms and they are \u201cWorld\u201d psalms. Samaras\u2019 position and politics, in both the narrow and broader senses, drive several of the poems as the speaker responds to contemporary events and values with anger and occasional despair. Many of the poems, though\u2014and these are the ones I\u2019m most drawn to\u2014are more personal lyrics that also respond to the human condition.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Unpronounceable Psalm,\u201d Psalm 2 in the collection, illustrates how figurative language can be used to express frustration with the limits of language, even while exploiting the beauty of that very language. It begins with these sentences:<\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t wrap my mouth around the vowel of your name.
\nYour name, a cave of blue wind that burrows and delves
\nendlessly, that rings off the walls of my drumming, lilting heart,
\nthrough the tiny pulsations of my wrists, the blood in my neck.<\/p>\n

Many people consider that God has a name, and that God\u2019s name is \u201cGod,\u201d and that they can pronounce it very well. The poem here though specifies \u201cthe vowel of your name,\u201d the breath of it linking one consonant with another. If Samaras is referring here to a specific name, it is likely the word generally translated as \u201cYahweh,\u201d a breathy word itself, or he may be alluding to the fact that Hebrew is printed without vowels. Or he may not be referring to a specific name but rather to the challenge of knowing God well enough to pronounce God\u2019s name. Regardless of Samaras\u2019 intent, however, all of those meanings are layered into the first line. The poem continues with an explicit metaphor: \u201cYour name, a cave of blue wind\u2026\u201d which extends through the sentence, until we reach its end, understanding that God\u2019s name pulses in human veins and human blood. What is attractive to me about these lines, however, is the language and the imagery, words that invite my return until, hearing the ringing and drumming and lilting, I follow the language into its possibilities of meaning.<\/p>\n

As this poem progresses toward its conclusion, the figurative language remains prominent, until in the penultimate sentence circles back to the imagery above:<\/p>\n

\u2026my words
\nare only the echo of you that rings within my soul, my soul
\na cave of blue wind that houses the draft of you,
\nthe eternal vowel of you I can\u2019t wrap my mouth around.<\/p>\n

God\u2019s name is equivalent here to the human soul, each metaphorized as \u201ca cave of blue wind.\u201d and it is God, rather than the name of God, that is the \u201ceternal vowel\u201d here. Extending these figurative equivalencies, God is God\u2019s name, and God\u2019s name is the human soul, and so therefore God is the human soul. We want to be careful to avoid overinterpreting metaphor, but the theology of this poem is undeniably complex. The poem is not a treatise, however, and the reader\u2019s primary task is not to untangle its logic. Rather, the reader surrenders to immersion in metaphor and image, the true pleasure of this text, and then perhaps considers the theology, patiently, curiously.<\/p>\n

Some of the poems in this collection are overtly political. Others border on the mystical, though in contrast to some mystical writing, they are not impenetrable or hermetic. As with other types of writing, the mystical and the political form separate threads in this volume. Most readers, certainly those with a Christian background, will find all of the poems accessible. And like the Biblical psalms, American Psalm, World Psalm <\/em>is most fruitfully read in small sections, a poem or two at a time, over the course of weeks rather than hours.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nicholas Samaras. American Psalm, World Psalm. Ashland Poetry Press, 2014. 233 pgs. $22.95. Reviewed by Lynn Domina Nicholas Samaras\u2019 second collection, American Psalm, World Psalm is a hybrid book, though not \u201chybrid\u201d in the sense that we often hear the word applied to contemporary literature. It\u2019s not the offspring of prose and poetry, of memoir […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-areviewaweek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=354"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":356,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354\/revisions\/356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}